


Peace On Earth (and an Aerodynamically Perfect Snowball)

by agentverbivore (verbivore8642)



Series: Holiday!Verse [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Adorable FitzSimmons, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Future Fic, Gen, Jemma's POV, Snowball Fight, Tipsy!Skye, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, cuteness all around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbivore8642/pseuds/agentverbivore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Fitz disappears during the SHIELD New Year's Eve party, Jemma goes hunting for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peace On Earth (and an Aerodynamically Perfect Snowball)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dpesanator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dpesanator/gifts).



> Takes place in my [Holiday!Verse](http://archiveofourown.org/series/181142), just after [Twelve Days](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2740691). The only context necessary is that it takes place about a year in the future, and FitzSimmons are in an established relationship.
> 
> (Only canon-compliant through 2x09.)

“If you and Fitz ditch this party, too, I _swear to God Simmons_ –” Skye waved her half-full glass of eggnog in Jemma’s face. “I will hack into your phone and steal any [naked pictures](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2740691) you’ve ever sent to him.” 

Jemma wrinkled her nose and backed away from the eggnog, rolling her eyes for Trip’s benefit. His chin was resting on the crown of their friend’s head, arms crossed over her shoulders, and he seemed to only be here to chuckle at Skye’s tiny, mostly ineffective, and slightly inebriated rage. 

“What makes you think I’ve ever sent Fitz naked pictures? We _do_ see each other every day –” 

“I caught Fitz staring at one last week.” Skye grinned triumphantly and, when crossing her arms with a drink in hand proved to be too difficult, settled for placing one hand on her hip.

Flushing pink, Jemma made a mental note to tell Fitz to scour both their phones of said pictures. (Which was, in a way, too bad – he’d been like putty in her hands for _days_ thanks to that. She’d never be able to look at the bed in that recovery room the same way again.) “In any case, I’m here aren’t I? If you want to scold someone, scold Fitz, who has completely disappeared.” 

“Oh, shit,” Trip muttered, straightening and patting down his jeans pockets. After a moment, he pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper and held it out to Jemma with a distinctly sheepish look on his face. “Fitz asked me to give this to you – um, fifteen minutes ago. Someone –” He nudged Skye, who stuck her tongue out in return. “Kind of distracted me. Sorry.”

Jemma shook her head good-naturedly and took the note, but Skye swatted Trip’s arm. “Hold on, are you _helping_ them abandon me again?!” 

Trip just shrugged, and reached a long arm around her to grab a beer from a nearby table. “He made me swear on my grandpa’s laser cigarettes.” 

“Thank you, Trip,” Jemma interjected, as Skye’s mouth dropped open in a feint of total betrayal. As Jemma slipped out of the room, she thought she heard something about Skye drafting Trip into being her new co-host if he was going to help her original ones disappear, and grinned to herself. 

The note from Fitz was intriguingly cryptic, only instructing her to meet him outside entrance gate B. Making sure to grab her winter coat from the rack on her way through the Playground’s hallways, she wondered what he had cooked up, if anything. After her little [Twelve Days](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2740691) scheme, she was certain that he’d eventually find a way to pay her back (both for the teasing and the sentiment) – she just wasn’t sure if now was it.

Unfortunately, the Playground was somewhat labyrinthine at the best of times, and much of it was darkened this late at night since everyone was either on leave or at the New Year’s Eve party. Jemma peered down a dim hallway, trying to get her bearings, when she heard a small thump from the room she’d just passed. Before she could investigate, May stepped into the doorway, pulling a button-down shirt closed over a tank top.

“Simmons,” the older woman said, the barest touch of surprise in her voice. “What are you doing down here?”

“May!” Jemma smiled in relief and opened her mouth to beg for directions, but halted when Maria Hill stepped out of the darkened room and pulled the door closed behind her. “Agent Hill!” Her eyes flitted from one woman to the other for a moment before she let out an unfortunately squeaky, “Oh!”

“I’m not an agent anymore –” Hill glanced down at May, silently asking something.

“Jemma Simmons,” May provided. 

Hill’s eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly. “Simmons, of course,” she said, giving Jemma a small nod. “I'm very familiar with your work.”

“I –” Jemma could feel herself flush, although she wasn’t sure if it was at the implied compliment or having stumbled upon these two in a dark room during a party. “I got a little lost on my way to entrance gate B,” she managed to eke out, digging her fingernails into her palm as a reminder not to start babbling. 

“Second hall to the right, two lefts, a right, and straight on until the entrance.” May pointed her in the right direction, seemingly completely unruffled about the whole situation.

Smiling gratefully, Jemma nodded and scurried around the corner as fast as possible, pausing once they were out of sight to mouth an exaggerated ‘OH. MY. GOD.’ She was half tempted to circle back to the party to share her newfound gossip with Skye (May and _Hill_!), but then she remembered that Skye wasn’t a great secret-keeper at the best of times, and she’d already had a few drinks. Besides, Fitz was waiting for her – and the expression he’d surely wear when she told him would be just as priceless. 

Thanks to May’s flawless directions, Jemma made her way to the correct entrance in no time, buttoning up her coat as she pushed open the door. The night was quiet, dark, and – much to her surprise – filled with thick snowflakes. During the last couple of hours, the ground had been covered in at least a foot of snow and it was still falling, the air dry enough for the flakes themselves to be almost astoundingly large.

Jemma realized that she was smiling as she stepped outside, her face turned up to watch the crystalline structures float towards her in a streetlamp’s beam. England didn’t get snow like this – thick, dry, and gorgeous – so this kind of weather was a rare treat for her, and was probably the reason that Fitz had instructed her to meet him here. At that thought, she waded into the snow – thrilled that tonight’s party outfit included knee-high leather boots that would protect her feet – and craned her head to search for her conspicuously absent boyfriend. And that is when a snowball struck her directly in the back of the head.

She narrowed her eyes and turned around to see Fitz standing a few feet behind her, a small pile of snowballs cradled in one arm and a smug grin on his face.

"Did you know," he began, a particularly infuriating lilt to his voice, "that I figured out back at the Academy how to make an aerodynamically perfect snowball?" When she laughed outright as a response, he threw one of said snowballs at her, catching her elbow. “The game, Watson, is on,” he taunted, waving a snowball side-to-side in warning.

“Oh you did _not_ just ‘Watson’ me again, Leopold Fitz –” Jemma retorted, ducking to avoid his third snowball and scooping up an armful of snow while she was at it.

“Loser makes the winner New Year’s breakfast,” he called out, tossing another projectile and leaping behind a nearby mailbox to avoid her attempt to throw her entire armful of snow in his direction.

“I do love your blueberry waffles, what an excellent idea –” She managed to get out before squeaking at the snowball he managed to get in between the gap of her coat. “You are a _dead_ man,” Jemma gritted out, sheltering pathetically behind the lamppost and scooping up snowballs as quickly as physically possible, shivering slightly as the melted water slid down the front of her sweater dress. 

Fitz laughed from behind his barricade and lobbed another snowball at her, this one stopping short of her boots. “You don’t have the nerve.”

She managed to hit one of his calves, but narrowed her eyes at how well the bloody mailbox was hiding him. Damned skinny Scotsman. “Just try me. You don’t even know half the tasteless and odorless toxins readily available to someone of my expertise –” His next projectile just narrowly missed her head but hit her squarely on the shoulder and she dropped down, considering her next option. The lamppost was doing nothing to shield her; she couldn’t win if she stayed here.

“But then who’d give you those, uh – those backrubs you like so much?” The more-than-smug note to his voice made her either want to smack him on the back of the head or pull him into a broom closet – not that there _were_ any broom closets out here. Fitz peeked over the mailbox just enough to aim his next snowball and she managed to throw one fast enough to coat the top of his curls in snowflakes. 

“I’m sure Trip could be convinced,” she teased, deciding quickly that an ambush was her only option and scurrying around the other side of his pseudo-fort.

At that, Fitz straightened from his hiding place, searching for her with an adorably dismayed expression. “Hey, that’s not funny–” But before he could get out the rest of the sentence, Jemma went barreling into his side, sending them both into the cold powder. 

Both collapsing into giggles, they rolled around in the snow, each trying to get the upper hand but being slightly too evenly matched. Finally, Jemma managed to pin Fitz to the ground, straddling his hips and holding his wrists down next to his head, although she suspected that he’d stopped fighting back intentionally.

“Victory for England!” Jemma grinned as Fitz rolled his eyes, and then wriggled against him in a way that she knew was not entirely fair. “Say it, Fitz – you submit to English rule.”

His eyes widened briefly at her movements but narrowed again at her words. “I’ll submit to the rule of one p-particular English woman, and that’s only because she’s really very good at it.”

“Ah well,” Jemma said, releasing his wrists to lean further in. “I suppose I’ll accept that.” Instead of the warm kiss she was expecting when her lips met his, though, she felt him shivering beneath her – and then she had the sudden realization that there was no winter coat beneath her hands where they rested on his chest. Jemma sat up again, aghast as she saw Fitz lying in the snow in just his soaked-through shirt and cardigan.“ _Leopold Fitz, where is your coat?!_ ”

He shrugged, but the way he unconsciously curled one bright pink hand into the other for warmth belied his chill. “Forgot it inside.”

Groaning, Jemma scrambled to her feet and dragged him up after her, striding directly towards the entrance. “I cannot believe you – you could catch your death out here!” 

“I don’t mind the cold –” 

“You’re Scottish, not invincible,” she muttered, securing the door behind him.

“They’re not the same thing?” Fitz joked back, but his teeth chattered at the last word, somewhat undercutting his bravado.

“I’m dating the dumbest genius on this side of the Atlantic,” Jemma muttered as she dragged her shivering engineer through the Playground towards the residence hallway. At least Fitz didn’t protest, having apparently realized that perhaps initiating a snowball fight without wearing proper winter clothing had not been one of his more brilliant ideas.

Once they were locked in his bunk, she ordered him to strip out of his clothes and set about doing everything she could to warm the room up, fiddling with the wall control panel until she could feel warm air feathering the ends of her hair. Meanwhile, Fitz had changed into his favorite flannel pajama bottoms and a ratty old t-shirt, but Jemma wrinkled her nose when she saw his shoulders shiver as he pulled up his comforter. 

“You’re staying, right?” He asked this rather pathetically from underneath the comforter, voice almost too muffled to be intelligible and eyes just barely visible from where he was peeking over the edge. She chuckled and started pulling off her layers, having already planned on using her body heat to help him warm up.

“I _should_ just leave you to deal with the consequences of your own foolishness,” she chided, lifting up the covers to slide in next to him. His current state of near-hypothermia didn’t stop him from noticing that she’d stripped down to her underwear, however, and she suppressed an eye-roll at the way his pupils dilated at the sight. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her with less on than this, after all. As she tucked the comforter around her side, Fitz pressed one hand flat against her back to pull her closer and she gave a sharp gasp, biting her lip at the absolute frigidity of his skin. “You could’ve bloody _warned_ me you were going to do that.” This time she actually was a little annoyed – and also more worried, because his skin still wasn’t warming up.

“Sorry,” he murmured, his gaze still focused down the length of her body despite the fact that he couldn’t possibly see much under the covers. “Got distracted.”

Jemma raised an eyebrow, moving so that she was lying directly over him again, supporting her weight with her knees on either side of his hips. “Oh?” Letting her voice dip down an octave, settling into the tone that only he got to hear, she pressed slow kisses along his neck, trying to use her breath and tongue to heat up his still-frigid skin. “By what, precisely?”

A small groan escaped his throat and she felt his body shift beneath her in interest if not quite in response. “Thinking about other ways to warm up,” he rasped out, hands sliding unsubtly along her sides to rest just over the curve of her arse.

Jemma tutted at him; she could still feel the cold radiating from his hands through the back of her knickers. That really would not do. Taking her time, she started trailing kisses down his neck and across his collarbone, tugging his pajama shirt upwards as she slid in the opposite direction. His breath caught as he surmised her intended target, and she raised an eyebrow again, lowering her mouth to his abdomen. The skin here was marginally less cold, but was still being shaken by the shivers that he’d managed to suppress almost everywhere else. Once she reached the fine trail of hair that led to what she’d implied was her destination, Jemma made eye contact with Fitz, who seemed to have stopped breathing lest he interrupt her - and then she blew a loud, wet raspberry against his tummy.

Fitz let out an amusing squawk and instinctively curled in on himself to avoid another assault as Jemma collapsed into giggles over him. Pushing him fully onto his side, she tucked herself around his back, pulling his hands up to wrap underneath her arms. “Not until you’re completely back up to a normal bodily temperature. You’re worrisomely cold, Fitz, and I’m not rewarding you for your own stupidity.”

She could almost feel the pout as he settled in, leaning back and letting her tangle his legs more thoroughly with hers. “I dunno if I should be excited for the ‘until’ or feel unfairly teased.”

“Bit of both, I should think,” she answered, giving in to the urge to press her lips against the back of his neck. His muscles relaxed into her touch and he gave an unconscious hum of contentment, which Jemma took as a sign that he truly was still more cold than turned on. She pressed in as close as she possibly could, willing her own warmth to pass to him. Fitz had finally stopped shivering, which made the knot of worry in her chest loosen, but she needed to make sure that he hadn’t caught pneumonia before she could focus on anything else more intriguing.

A loud cheer rose from elsewhere in the Playground, and, raising her head to look at the bedside clock, she smiled. “Happy New Year, Fitz,” she said, gently tilting his face so she could give him a slow, sweet kiss. For a moment, Jemma let herself fall into the kiss like it was one of the very first ones they’d shared, when they were still new and unsure of each other, when the slightest movement of his lips against hers made her skin tingle, when just being able to hold him close had felt like something miraculous. 

Fitz stroked her cheek with his thumb, staring up at her, an affectionate smile playing around his lips. “Happy New Year, Jemma. I’m –” He paused, either to gather the words or his thoughts, and she tangled her fingers more tightly into his other hand. “I’m just happy I’m here with you.” 

Leaning down to rub her nose fondly against his, she couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across her face. “Me, too. Particularly now that I’m fairly certain you won’t lose any fingers or toes.”

He gave her a short huff and turned back onto his side, pulling her arm more tightly around him and shifting as close to her as he could be in this position. “Cannot believe you’re making fun of me right now. That’s no way to - to ring in a new year.”

Jemma gave a small snort of laughter and pressed her forehead to his shoulder. “Oh, Fitz. I think that taunting you is exactly the right way to ring in this year – and hopefully many more years to come.” 

She could feel him shake his head in amusement and grinned against his skin. Even if Fitz was rather idiotic at times when it came to his own wellbeing or things outside of their work, he was her idiot, and she was very much looking forward to celebrating once he was properly warm again. Complaints and aborted hypothermia aside, she thought this was a rather perfect way to start the year.

**Author's Note:**

> To dpesanator: I hope you like this! Since you didn't have any preferences, I went with general seasonal fluff. :-)


End file.
